One of the chief appeals of documentary film is the ability any given film has to pull you into a subculture that would otherwise be off-limits. Here’s Spearhunter,which follows some people you probably wouldn’t even guess existed: a set of men in Alabama who hunt wild boar with spears. In particular it investigates one guy who proclaimed himself the greatest spear hunter, and created a museum dedicated to the art of spear hunting. (And also to himself.)

The doc will premiere in March at SXSW, and this Spearhunter trailer is very entertaining and more than sufficient to arouse my curiosity about the story the film plans to tell. Read More »

A lot of people have asked me how we’re planning to distribute the film we’re making with Stephen Tobolowsky this year. The film is shaping up to be some hybrid between a documentary and a concert film, and it may only appeal to a very specific audience. But my personal hope is to go the film festival route and get picked up for distribution from there. If that doesn’t work, there are plenty of options for self-distribution, including Vimeo on Demand and VHX.

I’m always eager to learn from those who have traveled the path that I’m trying to go on myself. And by coincidence, I recently received an e-mail from Adam Roffman (the former program director of the excellent Independent Film Festival of Boston) mentioning that a film he produced, Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself, was going to be airing on PBS this Friday. That film is a documentary about a really interesting figure whose brilliance deserved further exploration (sound familiar?).

After appearing at 20-some festivals, Plimpton! did a limited theatrical release with a small distributor called Laemmle-Zeller (owner of the Laemmle theater chain in LA). The film received a DVD distribution deal and was supposed to go onto DVD this past October, but in early September, they got an offer to air on PBS and thus delayed the DVD release. I wanted to know more about how a film like this gets made, seen, and distributed, so Adam connected me with the film’s director, Luke Poling, who chatted with me over e-mail. See his answers to my questions after the jump.Read More »